An Amorphous Relationship
by ilovetoread38
Summary: Steve and Natasha begin to define their friendship and relationship after Fury makes them partners. Or, the five things Natasha learns about Steve, and the one things she learns about herself. Steve/Natasha friendship and eventual romance, but nothing major.


**1. His adaptability **

She can hear the thrumming of the bass and guitars even before the elevator doors open to let her onto the floor. She's surprised at the sound – and, really, isn't that more surprising? – but she chalks it up to Tony Stark and his 'Crash Course to the 21st Century' regimen that he has Steve and Thor trying out. Rolling her eyes, Natasha makes her way down the hallway and raps once on Steve's door before letting herself in.

The music turns off the second she walks inside. It's almost as if Steve were waiting for her. Must be the Super Soldier Hearing. He's laying on his bed with his hands cupped behind his head, eyes open and alert. He smiles when he sees her and motions for her to come closer.

She takes a quick look around the room, surveying the area like she normally does in new places. It's simple: a big bed with a blue comforter and white sheets, a dresser, a desk with a laptop, and a few lamps to give light. Nothing ostentatious. Just like Steve.

"I have my report," she says, holding up the manila folder. She and Steve are the only ones who still write theirs out before transferring it to the computer. Even _Thor_ dictates it for Jarvis to put into a file.

"Thanks," he replies. He sits up to take the folder out of her hands, dropping it on his own report. "I'll type it up before the debriefing tomorrow. You know how Fury gets if it's not on time."

Natasha nods but can't remember a time when Steve _wasn't _on time with his reports. Punctuality seemed to have been ingrained in him even before he became a soldier. She determines that he's just trying to be friendly and make small talk. She doesn't _do _small talk. She turns away to leave but then freezes. A thought that had been plaguing her mind since she stepped out of the elevator bubbles up unbidden out of her mouth:

"Why rock music?"

"Excuse me?"

She turns around again to face him. "The music you were listening to. I never really had you pegged for a rock and roll type of guy. I thought you would be more of a Muddy Waters fan than a Mick Jagger fan." She frowns when she realizes that even though he was listening to the Rolling Stones, he probably doesn't know who Muddy Waters _is_. That name was a bit more obscure.

Steve smiles and surprises her. "I like jazz just fine, but that's all I would listen to when I was growing up. My mom loved jazz. I just thought I'd give something new a try."

"Tony put you up to it."

"Actually, no. I started listening to rock music just after I got out of the ice. Figured I'd best get assimilated with modern culture, and I couldn't stand the stuff on the radio. Coulson recommended the Beatles."

"Oh."

She has nothing more to say, so she nods and turns towards the door, leaving Steve alone in his room. The music starts blasting again, and she grins slightly when she hears his voice faintly signing along. She thinks (_I Can't Get No) Satisfaction_ is the perfect song for him.

* * *

**2. His past life**

It's Thanksgiving and they're all gathered around the dining room table of Stark Tower. Everyone is there: the Avengers, Pepper, Happy, Rhodey, Jane, Darcy, and Betty. Even Clint's new partner, Bobbi, is there to join them. It's a good thing, too, because there's enough food on the table to feed a couple of Asgardians for a month. Natasha is sure she can see the table's legs groaning under the weight of the plates.

She's sitting in between Bruce and Steve. Bruce has been enamored with Betty all night and they've begun to discuss something she _really_ doesn't need to hear, so she turns to Steve for conversation. She finds him gazing along the table with a look of awe on his face. He hasn't even touched his food yet, and come on, he's Captain America. He should be on his third helping by now.

"You all right there, Cap? You look like a kid at Disney World," she teases. A few months ago, it would have surprised her that she would feel comfortable with teasing him, but they're partners now, and she knows him better than she once did.

"Yeah . . . yeah, it's just amazing, isn't it?"

She's a bit confused. "Thanksgiving? I may not be American, but I _know_ that this holiday has been around since before you were born."

"No, not Thanksgiving," he says, rolling his eyes. "The _food_."

Natasha snorts. "You're such a boy. Dig in, it's not like the food runs out."

"It did before."

He looks uncomfortable, but he's got that far away look in his eyes that tells her that he's reliving a memory. She's suddenly grateful that the others are so engrossed in their own conversations; they don't need to see Steve like this.

"What was your last Thanksgiving like?" she asks tentatively.

Steve looks at her. "It was a lot rowdier than this. They obviously don't celebrate Thanksgiving in Europe, but my team and I went to a bar to 'toast America'. I don't think I've ever seen Bucky that drunk."

She laughs and tries to picture Steve at a bar. She's having trouble with the image, but she's not sure if it's because he can't get drunk, or the fact that Stark calls him 'Captain Morals'.

"Before that, it was usually just me, Bucky, a can of green beans and a little cranberry sauce we used to sneak from the kitchen at the orphanage."

Natasha nods at the depressing image, though Steve doesn't seem upset about it. He just seems amazed at how quickly things have changed.

"You know, last Thanksgiving I was in Afghanistan taking out a group of men who were smuggling opium to child prostitutes."

He looks startled. "Sounds like an exciting way to celebrate."

"You have no idea," she concedes.

His eyes lock on hers and it's a good thing that no one is paying attention to them because she squirms slightly under his gaze. She can tell he's looking for something, and she doesn't want to hide from him. He's her partner. He should know her in and out.

Finally he speaks.

"Do you ever miss home?"

The question is a loaded one, she knows that. She thinks back to her childhood, to Russia, to her mother and the fire and all the years of learning to just _turn it off_. The switch is right there, waiting for her to flip it off and tell Steve the lie he wants to hear. But she can't.

He's her partner.

She tells him the truth.

"All the time."

He nods once and looks back at all the food surrounding him, all the happy people laughing and eating and enjoying their time spent together. He picks up his fork and takes a bite of his mashed potatoes.

"Me too."

* * *

**3. His photographic memory**

She hasn't seen Steve in a week, and it's starting to worry her. He's normally milling about the Tower, reading a book or practicing in the gym. Sometimes he heads out for a run or a ride on his bike, but he always comes back within a few hours. He's been gone for seven days, and he never told her where he was going.

Some partner he is for not telling her where he was going.

Some spy _she_ is for not finding out.

"Where are you, Steve?" she mutters to herself.

She's unprepared for a voice to help her. "Mr. Rogers is in his quarters, Ms. Romanoff," answers Jarvis casually. He must have known the whole damn time, the stupid AI.

Natasha starts to get angry. He's been in his _room_ for a whole week and she never found out? She checked there, for Christ's sake, and the gym, and the library, and the living room, and the air ducts, and –

"If it is any consolation to your esteemed skills, Mr. Rogers arrived 4.3 minutes ago and went straight to his quarters without alerting anyone of his arrival."

"Where was he?"

"London, if his plane ticket is anything to go by. Mr. Stark asked me to monitor the airports to determine his location. It was, as you say, a 'piece of cake' to find him in the terminal of JFK," replies Jarvis with what can only be called smugness coloring his tone.

"Thanks, Jarvis."

"It was my pleasure, Ms. Romanoff."

She's seething as she treks the familiar path to his room high up in Stark Tower. The elevator chimes and lets her off, and she doesn't hear the familiar loud music she usually hears when she goes to his room. It's silent as a graveyard save for the angry tapping of her shoes along the floor. _Good, _she thinks,_ this isn't a causal visit_.

She doesn't tap on the door. She knows he can hear her. She opens the door wide, saying angrily, "Where the _hell_ do – "

She pauses when she sees him sitting in wrinkled black suit, his head propped up wearily on his hands. His are closed and he looks defeated.

"Hey, Nat," he says softly.

She takes a cautious step forward. "What's going on? Why've you been gone for so long?"

He still doesn't look at her when he says, "Well, Peggy was sick, so I went to see her one last time."

She knows all about Peggy Carter, the woman who trained soldiers back in 1943, the woman who helped to found S.H.I.E.L.D., the woman who never stopped looking for the man who left her behind. She knows about Peggy and Steve's last kiss, has heard their last conversation together because it's one of the most precious digital recordings in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s library. She knows she felt jealous of Peggy, not because she was with Steve, but because no one had ever loved Natasha Romanoff the way that Steve Rogers loved Peggy Carter.

"It was pneumonia. She died on Tuesday."

"Oh, Steve . . ."

Natasha gets the uncomfortable and unfamiliar feeling of heartache as she looks at how broken he looks. His voice is hollow, but Natasha was trained to spot weakness. The heavier breaths, the clenched hands. It also helps that she and Steve have been partners for half a year now, and she knows his ticks as well as she knows Clint's. It's the closed eyes that do her in. She knows he's hiding from her when he won't let her see his eyes.

She closes the distance between them and lays a hand on his back. He's not crying, not breaking down. He's just closed off like he doesn't want her to see him like this. Natasha thinks that's stupid. Even she sees the necessity of opening the floodgate once in a while.

"Did you say goodbye?"

He nods. "I was with her when she . . . when . . ." he breaks off and finally looks at her, his eyes swimming with so much undeniable _pain_ that Natasha finds herself feeling his loss as well. "Her funeral was yesterday."

Natasha rubs his back the way she remembers her mother once did for her when her father died. Her nimble fingers rub small, slow circles across his taut muscles, and she can slowly feel him relax beneath her touch. He sighs heavily and rests his head against her shoulder. She goes rigid and stops for a moment. Then she relaxes. This is _Steve_. Steve, who would never hurt her. Steve, who needs her right now.

He needs her right now.

No one's ever needed her for something like this.

"They're all gone," he whispers to her. She starts massaging his back again as he tells her, almost as if it is a secret, "I've looked for them, the Commandos, Peggy, even the kids I grew up with at the orphanage. Peggy was the last one."

She gets it, she really does. Every connection he had to his old life is gone. He feels alone in a world that isn't his. He feels the way she does nearly every day.

"Tell me about her."

Steve huffs a laugh. "Peggy? Peggy was one of the best people I've ever met. She was so smart and witty, and she didn't let Philips push her around." He smiles slightly at Natasha. "You know, she reminds me a little bit of you."

"Me?"

"Yeah. You both are the two scariest women I've ever met. You both are beautiful and deadly and kind. Sure, you're a trained assassin who knows how to kill me with your cuticle, and she wore lipstick, but you're a lot like her."

She doesn't blush because that is _not_ something that Natasha Romanoff would ever do, but she allows herself to smile a bit. "Do you have a picture of her?"

"No, but I can show you what she looked like."

He reaches for his sketchbook and pencil that he keeps on his nightstand and turns to a blank page. He begins to scratch away at the page and an image of a woman begins to appear.

"She had brown eyes and curly brown hair," he says as he draws those features on her face. "Her lips were always stained red from her lipstick that I swear she never took off. And she had a beauty mark right _there_ next to her eye.

"She normally wore her military uniform but one night, Howard and I were at a bar and she walked up to me in this red dress and I swear I'd never seen a woman like her. She was beautiful, and she knew it."

He finishes the drawing and Natasha is taken aback by the detail. She can picture the bar around her and the music playing in the background as she stares into Peggy Carter's eyes. Steve is right: she looked stunning in that red dress.

"This is amazing."

"That's a big compliment coming from you. It's just the serum. I remember everything in perfect clarity. That's the best memory I have of her."

They're both quiet for a moment before Steve says, "Thanks."

"For what?"

"For being here."

Natasha looks deeply into his eyes, his eyes that still aren't happy but aren't painful to look into anymore.

"What else are partners for?"

* * *

**4. His strength**

She looks up and sees the blue flash hit the side of the building, causing it to break off from the rest of the building. It's coming straight towards her, a massive, heavy ton of bricks, and in that moment, Natasha Romanoff knows that she is going to die. There's no time to move, no way she can avoid her impending doom. All she can do is watch as a wall of red bricks come crashing towards her, overtaking her vision of the bright blue sky.

She closes her eyes and waits for the impact . . .

That never comes.

She looks up to find that the building is hovering a foot above her face, shaking slightly. She hears harsh pants to her left, and she turns to find Steve _holding up the side of a building_ with his bare hands. She's never seen a person this strong. His muscles are taut and strained his eyes tight with the effort of holding up thousands of pounds of brick and mortar and metal. He manages to grunt out, "Nat, move!" before he has to concentrate on his breathing to keep the weight of the building from crushing them both.

She doesn't need to be told twice. She sprints out from under the hood of the building and into the bright daylight. She looks back to Steve, who is looking frantically around, probably trying to find a place where he can throw his burden without hurting anyone or causing even more destruction. Stupid, crazy mutant birds. She's trying to help him find a place when she sees a stray beam from one of Tony's repulsors hit the building, causing it to crumble like a Jenga tower, crushing her partner.

"Steve!" she screams. Screw code names – that's her _partner _underneath all that rubble. In her ear, she can hear the rest of the Avengers yelling for her to report, but her heart is in her throat and all she can do is run to him, try to save him like he just saved her.

She begins to move the bricks frantically, calling Steve's name and panicking when she hears no response. She feels something at her back and she whips around to see Thor taking off the head of one of the mutant birds that must have landed behind her to kill her. She silently thanks him with her eyes, and Thor nods in response.

"Steven is underneath the rubble, I presume?" Thor asks, his eyebrows furrowing.

"Yes," she says, wincing as she cuts her hands on a jagged piece of metal.

"I shall provide assistance," Thor says and begins to move the mess away faster than she ever could. In the background, she hears the Hulk raging, so she knows that they have cover from the monster birds at least for a little while.

Natasha ignores the pain in her hands as she tosses away brick after brick. All she can think is _please be alive, please be alive, please be alive_. She doesn't see how he can be. He's covered by god knows how many pounds of destruction, and his head must have been opened like a soup can. The rational part of Natasha, the one she listens to 99% of the time, knows that Steve is dead. But she can't live knowing that Steve is dead.

That he died for her.

So she keeps searching. She'll never stop until she finds him.

It's Thor who finally finds him after five excruciating minutes. Thor calls out to her when he sees the shield in the rubble, and the two of them slowly uncover Steve's body. They remove the shield first and find that Steve must have used it to protect his head when the building fell. His face is pale and there's a gash on the bridge of his nose from where the shield must have hit his face, but when Natasha leans close she can hear the faint breaths as Steve struggles for air.

"He's alive."

They dig him out of the rest of the rubble, careful not to move or jostle him. Natasha's stomach clenches at all the blood, at the way his ribs move between her touch, at the indent that lets her _know_ that his pelvis has been crushed. Her hands are stained red with his blood; blood that covers his uniform, blood that drenches Thor's cape as the demigod presses it to a wound on Steve's abdomen. There is too much blood.

She doesn't know how he can survive this.

Any normal person would be dead.

But Steve Rogers is _not_ a normal person. He's a Super Soldier.

She hears a whooshing sound behind her but doesn't turn around. She knows Tony is there, asking Jarvis to assess the situation – she can hear him through her earpiece. She feels him climb up the mountain of rubble until he's right next to her. She can't even look at him.

She wants to murder him.

"What the fuck happened?"

She's so angry that she doesn't answer him. She just cards her fingers through Steve's hair and shushes him as he groans and shifts. She's never seen anyone survive something like this. She's growing increasingly pessimistic and doesn't think that even the Super Soldier Serum can heal him from this.

Thor answers when she doesn't. "It seems that one of your beams of light struck the building that Steven was valiantly holding up, causing it to bury our captain among its devastation."

Natasha looks up to see Tony's shocked, white face. The man looks sick. _Good_, she thinks. Steve is trembling beneath her touch, and she can do nothing to stop it. He's dying.

"Jarvis, check for spinal injuries," Tony whispers.

"None detected, sir," Jarvis replies. She clenches her teeth.

"Blood loss?"

"Fifteen percent, sir. Rapidly increasing. If I may suggest – "

"Tony, shut your fucking headset off!" Natasha screams. She can't take it. She can't listen to Steve become a medical list. She just can't.

Tony nods and her line goes dead. He bends down and carefully gathers Steve in his arms. Steve's breath hitches when Natasha's hand falls out of his hair.

She glares at him. "What are you doing?"

Tony flips down his faceplate. "Getting him out of here. Thor, take control."

He's gone in a flash of red and gold, Steve hanging limply in his arms. And Natasha is left on the ground, dealing with mutant birds while her mind is miles away with Steve in the clouds.

BWCABWCABWCA

She jumps out of Thor's arms and onto the floor of the helicarrier an hour later. She doesn't even thank him, she just sets off down to the medbay where she knows Steve will be. Thor trails a step behind her as if he is afraid to simply be next to her. It wouldn't surprise her. She knows how she looks right now: cold eyes and set mouth, long stride and nostrils flared. She's scary.

She wants it to be that way.

She wants to show Tony Stark just how many ways she can kill him with a paper clip. She wants to disembowel him, cut off his testicles, flay him alive and let the birds peck at his decaying flesh. She wants to make him suffer, suffer like how Steve must have suffered while buried underneath all that rubble. Buried while protecting . . .

She doesn't want to think about that.

She just wants to see Stark die.

She sees him sitting on the ground outside the OR's doors, his head in his hands. He looks up when he sees her approach and flinches when a knife whooshes past his head and embeds in the walls next to his ear (She may _want_ to kill him, but Fury would have her ass for that, and it's not worth the paperwork.). Thor lets out a protest but Tony says nothing. He just stares blankly at her, using her tactics of emotional isolation.

"How stupid are you, Stark?"

Silence.

"Seriously," she says lowly, "How stupid do you have to be to fire blindly and hurt your own _teammate_?"

"Woman of the shadows," says Thor, grabbing her shoulder and keeping her away from Tony, "perhaps now is not the time to –"

"Not now Thor!" Natasha all but screams, still looking at Tony and shaking of Thor's hand. "What's the matter with you? Why didn't you look?"

Tony looks and says in a broken voice, "I did, Tasha, the bird-thing moved out of the way and it hit the building. I'm sorry."

"You're _sorry_? Sorry isn't going to fix anything! Sorry just –"

"Natasha, shut up!" Tony whispers harshly but it carries as if he had used a megaphone. "Just shut up. It was an accident. I fucked up, I know, but stop shouting. Steve will hear you."

Natasha glares at him and crosses her eyes. "What do you mean? He's in surgery, isn't he?"

Tony takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. It looks like he's physically deflating. "Yeah, he's in surgery, but he's a Super Soldier. Drugs don't work on him – he metabolizes them too fast."

"Steven is awake?" Thor asks.

"He's been in and out of consciousness since we were flying."

Natasha closes her eyes at the horrible image before her. Its then that she realizes that Tony knows all about surgery without anesthesia, and that's probably the reason for his haunted eyes. She knows she should feel pity, but she doesn't. All she feels is pure, raw anger.

"I'm going in."

"Natasha, they already kicked me out. They don't want too many people."

She glares at Stark, stopping him in his tracks. "I'm going in."

She pushes the doors to the OR open and is greeted with the smell on antiseptic and blood. There is medical equipment all around her, and an annoying, rapid beeping noise that she knows is Steve's heartbeat. There are five doctors huddled around him, around Steve. Steve, whose face is pale, whose lips are bloodless. Whose eyebrows are furrowed in pain. Whose hands are clenching the bar of the table so hard that the metal is bending in his grip. Steve, who is in so much pain that it must be taking all of his energy not to scream as the doctors are cutting open his stomach and poking around inside.

She gives the doctors her most deadly glare when they try to send her away. They quickly shrug and turn back to their patient. Natasha slinks over to Steve's side and looks at the mess of Steve's body. He's pelvis is still deformed along with his lower leg, and his one part of his chest is rising and falling out of harmony with the rest of his chest. Natasha can't even look at his abdomen, where the doctors are performing surgery. She can't.

She wants to reassure him – grab his hand or something – but she doesn't know how to do it without hurting him. She's about to say something stupid and meaningless when he whispers, "Nat."

She looks down at his closed eyes. "How'd you know it was me?"

"Always know . . . when 's you."

He opens his eyes and blinks rapidly, clamping his teeth shut in pain. She ignores all of her past training and follows her instincts.

She takes his hand with her bloody, scraped one.

"Don't," he pants, "Crush . . . hand."

He's trembling from the effort of not breaking her hand, and it's then that Natasha learns that Steve is the strongest person she's ever laid eyes on. She takes her hand out of his to give him some reprieve and instead runs her hand through his short, sweaty hair.

"You'll make it through this. I'm here."

He nods, and that's how they spend the next seven hours, fighting off the enemy of pain and misery with a touch and words unspoken.

* * *

**5. ****His sleeping patterns**

Natasha is looking for Steve. They had come back from a mission in Greenland a few days ago, where this group of scientists was trying to build a portal to another world. Needless to say, S.H.I.E.L.D. couldn't afford another Chitauri attack, so they sent the Black Widow and Captain America to stop the bad guys, give them justice, and save the world. Yadda, yadda, yadda. Natasha's just glad that they're home in New York; northern Greenland is freezing, even in April. Anyway, she's looking for Steve because she can tell something has been off about him ever since they got back from the mission. She's going to talk some sense into him.

It's become a post-mission routine for them to check in on one another. It's helpful, too; Natasha was once hypnotized by a magician in Uruguay to kill Tony Stark when Tony said the word "lemon". As much as Natasha would have loved to have a chance to murder Tony, it really was lucky that Steve found something wrong with her and broke the hypnosis. Natasha can only imagine the outcome of killing the world's most famous genius billionaire playboy philanthropist. She'd have been taken down before she could say "Ironman". And it was plain embarrassing that the Black Widow could be hypnotized by some crappy magician in South America. Luckily Steve never told a soul.

It's nearly midnight when she steps into the main living area of Stark Tower. The lights are off, but Steve is illuminated in the dim light of a full moon and the bright lights of the city. He's sitting there, right in front of the wall of windows, just staring out into the bright skyline. His face is reflected in the glass, and Natasha can see the dark circles underneath his eyes. He's slouched over and doesn't seem to notice her approach. Natasha comes so close that she can see her own distorted reflection in the window.

She lays a hand on his should and he jumps. "What? Nat?"

She sits down next to him and stares at the city with him. The lights in the windows of all the buildings around the Tower wink at her, and she thinks that if she were a romantic person, she would find it beautiful and humbling. But she's not a romantic person, so she sees it for how it is: nine million people packed into a few square miles of space. Nothing more, nothing less.

"You've been avoiding me."

"Mhmm."

"Why've you been avoiding me?"

Steve shrugs lethargically. "Dunno."

She looks at him and can see all the fatigue apparent in his body language. "When was the last time you slept?"

"Before the mission."

She blinks and turns her body towards him. "But that was almost a _week_ ago."

"I've gone longer."

Natasha cups his face in her hands. He tries to look away from her, but Natasha Romanoff is a determined woman. "How long?" she asks, but she has a feeling she already knows the answer.

"Seventy years," he whispers, his eyes locked on hers.

She sighs realizes that their mission took place close to the place where he crashed the plane into the water. _That's why he's remembering it _now. She says, "So don't you want to sleep now? Seventy years is a long time to be awake."

"No." Steve shakes his head. "When I was awake, I knew that time was passing, that people were moving on without me. I can't let it happen again."

"It won't. Everyone is here for you. I'm here for you."

A year ago, those words would have sounded phony coming out of her mouth. They would have been said to a target so she could worm her way into his good graces and then slit his throat without remorse. Not anymore. Because she's saying them to Steve, her partner. The person she trusts most in this world.

She grabs his hand and pulls him up. He sways a little bit on his feet, but does not lean on her for support. She leads them to the elevator and presses the button for her floor. It dawns on her that he's never been in her room before – she's never let anyone in her special place – but she feels taking him there. He's earned it.

They're out of the elevator and into her room before it occurs to him that this is strange. "Nat, this is your room."

"I know."

"I've never been in your room."

"I know. I've never wanted you here."

"Oh."

Her room is plain and simple, much like Steve's. No one, not even one of Tony's many maids, has been here since she moved in. She leads him to the bed and pushes him down. "Take off your shoes."

"Nat. . ."

"Do it. I'm not pulling them off for you. I'm not your mother."

He obeys and then the two lay down on the bed together. They're both clad in sweatpants, and Natasha realizes that they've never seen each other so natural before. They're always sparring or fighting aliens or attending Stark's parties. They've never really dressed down in front of one another.

She lifts the covers up and they both get underneath the blankets. They're both safe and warm and nothing will hurt them.

"I don't want to see the ice again."

He links his hand in hers and she shifts closer to him. His eyes are wide open and he's staring at the ceiling like he's waiting for it to fall on him.

"So dream of me."

He nods and closes his eyes. She does too, and before long, their breathing evens out and they fall asleep, hand in hand.

She dreams of him, but she thinks he's dreaming of her, too.

* * *

**+1. She can love**

She wakes up the next morning with someone's arm across her back, her body pressed against a strong chest. She thinks for a moment that she must be on a mission, but then she hears the faint snoring and she looks up to find Steve sleeping next to her, completely oblivious to the world around him. She finds it adorable.

Adorable. She finds Steve adorable. When did that happen? Natasha Romanoff doesn't think _puppies_ are adorable, let alone a grown man. But then he shifts and the light catches his hair like a halo and Natasha feels a warm, unfamiliar feeling bubbling in her stomach.

With a start, she learns that she loves him.

She wiggles closer to him, careful not to wake him. She feels good about herself, and she realizes that this is what she must have been missing all these years. The greatness of human contact, of having someone you trust so completely right by your side. She loves this feeling.

With Steve's soft breaths on the back of her neck, she goes to sleep once again, feeling better than she ever has before.

* * *

**Whoa. That was a lot more angsty than I thought it was going to be. It was supposed to be a comedy with Steve doing completely random things that he shouldn't even know how to do. I guess my muse loves it some hurt!Steve and caring!Natasha. *Sigh*. Sorry if Natasha and Steve are OOC. I just thought they'd make a great pair, and Natasha can't be as bitchy and cold as everyone makes her out to be. Reviews are lovely! **


End file.
